General McChrystal’s Failure of Followership

After serving as president for only a couple of months, Barack Obama fired the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan. To replace him, Obama selected another general he barely knew, Stanley A. McChrystal. Rather like his opponent in the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain, who similarly selected for a post of extreme importance a person of whom he was nearly entirely ignorant (Sarah Palin as running mate), Obama chose as commander in a theater of war someone equally unfamiliar, and poorly vetted, someone who could turn out to surprise — and did.

In little more than a year, McChrystal stunned administration officials not only by being wildly indiscreet with a reporter from Rolling Stone, but, much more critically, by refusing to follow their lead, by refusing to play well with others (except, curiously, Hamid Karzai), and by refusing to obey rules in which the military take their lead from civilians, from the president in particular. Consider the way in which McChrystal got Obama to agree to, acquiesce to, what he, McChrystal, said he wanted and needed. By ordering his own policy review, a review that somehow (guess how) was leaked to the press, McChrystal boxed in Obama, in effect obliging him to ramp up the war effort, including (among other things) sending 30,000 additional troops into battle.

Had Obama and his advisers vetted McChrystal, carefully, completely, they would have learned that, notwithstanding his stellar credentials, his disinclination to follow dutifully was life long. He never went along to get along, resisting the powers that be, even when he was a stripling at West Point. In his now famous/infamous Rolling Stone article, tellingly titled, “The Runaway General,” Michael Hastings writes that McChrystal was a “ringleader of campus dissidents — a dual role that taught him how to thrive in a rigid, top-down environment while thumbing his nose at authority every chance he got.”

This pattern continued throughout his adulthood, with McChrystal opting to put himself in extreme, often secretive situations outside the military mainstream, choosing a career path that allowed him repeatedly to push his superiors as he pushed the envelope. “A highly intelligent badass,” is how Hastings describes him.

Nor did this resistance to authority come to a grinding halt when McChrystal reached the pinnacle of his career as commander in Afghanistan. Quite the contrary; the Rolling Stone article makes clear that McChrystal continued to play the bad boy. He drank, he cursed, he thumbed his nose openly, blatantly, promiscuously, at authority, and, most important, he surrounded himself with like-minded men who mirrored, rather than corrected for, his own proclivities. “Team America,” they called themselves — McChrystal’s “handpicked collection of killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators and outright maniacs.”

I’ll admit to the benefit of hindsight. But for a fledgling president like Obama to pick a badass like McChrystal as his most important commander during a time of war was a dumb thing to do. Any reason to think McChrystal would change his ways overnight? No — not hardly. Past performance is as good an indicator as any of future performance.

All along the general took some swipes at the president, not least of which was a reference to when they first met. Hastings reported that McChrystal thought Obama “uncomfortable and intimidated” in a roomful of military brass. But, even more to the point, is this description of their first meeting one-on-one. According to one of McChrystal’s advisers, “It was a 10-minute photo-op. Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. Here’s this guy who’s going to run his fucking war, but he didn’t seem very engaged. The Boss [McChrystal] was pretty disappointed.”

The story provides more evidence that McChrystal is not now, as he never was, the kind of a follower you want as a leader. In contrast to the old days, when manly virtues seemed to suffice, in the 21st century this style of leadership will no longer wash. As the delirious reception to Obama’s nomination of General David Petreus to replace McChrystal testifies, what we want now are leaders who can be, simultaneously, followers, commanders who can cooperate and collaborate as skillfully as they can command and control. It’s a lesson as applicable to the boardroom as it is to the battle field — and one better learned before, not after, the fact.

Barbara Kellerman is the James MacGregor Burns Lecturer in Public Leadership at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and is author and editor of many books and articles on leadership.

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